In a test or treatment using a catheter, such as a cardiac catheter test, an artery is punctured, and a guide wire and a catheter are inserted. Examples of the puncture site include the radial artery, the brachial artery, and the femoral artery. Among such arteries, the radial artery is easy to provide hemostasis and rest after the test and does not need a restriction on the patient's activities, and is thus suitable as the puncture site.
A high level of skill is needed to puncture the radial artery. A puncture of the radial artery is typically performed by estimating the running of the radial artery by palpation. If difficult, a puncture may be performed by using an ultrasonic diagnostic device. To perform a procedure while scanning a probe is troublesome. In addition, an ultrasonic diagnostic device is relatively expensive. From such a clinical background, a simple and relatively inexpensive technique for visualizing various arteries, particularly the radial artery, has been desired.
As a technical approach, there has been proposed an artery visualization device that uses the property that human tissues such as skin, fat, and muscle are highly transmissive to near-infrared light, but hemoglobin in blood absorbs near-infrared rays (Patent Literature 1). In this artery visualization device, the skin on the back side of the wrist is irradiated with near-infrared light from a light guide portion, and the near-infrared light transmitted through the wrist is received on the front side of the wrist to form a near-infrared image of the arteries of the wrist. To prevent the near-infrared light from being absorbed by the capillary plexus to make the image of the arteries unclear, the skin on the back side of the wrist is compressed by the light guide portion at appropriate pressure to collapse the capillary plexus in the skin on the back side of the wrist. The artery visualization device thus includes a pressure sensor for performing the compression by the light guide portion at appropriate pressure, and, if necessary, a pressure adjustment unit such as a balloon.